Ed Ruscha

Back of Hollywood: Ed Ruscha’s paintings, drawings, films and books take their inspiration from everyday American icons. In his portrayals of elegant landscapes, logos and gas stations, his distinctive choice of words and phrases, and his unique, totally identifiable treatment of his subjects, he distils pop culture images using movie and typographic codes as stylish as they are meaningful.

Ruscha’s works are to be found in leading public and private collections, and have been shown worldwide in venues including the Hayward Gallery (London), the Haus der Kunst (Munich), the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), and LACMA and the Getty Center (Los Angeles).

Works

La vie moderne

4 works by Ed Ruscha,

For the Biennale, Ed Ruscha is showing three paintings from the series Psycho Spaghetti Western and another titled Gators. In Gators (short for alligators), ripped tyres seem to hang in space, giving a sublime aspect to the worn and ravaged shapes, while the title recalls how much the treads of a tyre owe to the scales of a reptile. In the Psycho Spaghetti Western series, the landscape is cut horizontally in two. One half is quasi abstract, while the other recalls a background of greenery and gravel with various objects standing out – turnedround signposts, cardboard boxes, litter and food packaging.